Ohio Wants Doctors to Re-Implant Ectopic Pregnancies
barbara hudson writes:
Once upon a time in a strange land (actually, Indiana in 1897) the government tried to pass a law making pi = 3.2.
Ohio is now trying to pass a law doing the impossible - require the implanting of ectopic pregnancies.
A bill to ban abortion introduced in the Ohio state legislature requires doctors to "reimplant an ectopic pregnancy" into a woman's uterus - a procedure that does not exist in medical science - or face charges of "abortion murder".
This is the second time practising obstetricians and gynecologists have tried to tell the Ohio legislators that the idea is currently medically impossible.
The move comes amid a wave of increasingly severe anti-abortion bills introduced across much of the country as conservative Republican politicians seek to ban abortion and force a legal showdown on abortion with the supreme court.
Ohio's move on ectopic pregnancies - where an embryo implants on the mother's fallopian tube rather than her uterus rendering the pregnancy unviable - is one of the most extreme bills to date.
"I don't believe I'm typing this again but, that's impossible," wrote Ohio obstetrician and gynecologist Dr David Hackney on Twitter. "We'll all be going to jail," he said.
The new Ohio HB413, p.184: To avoid criminal charges, including murder, for abortion, a physician must ""[attempt to] reimplant an ectopic pregnancy into the women's uterus"
and
"There is no procedure to reimplant an ectopic pregnancy," said Dr Chris Zahn, vice-president of practice activities at the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists. "It is not possible to move an ectopic pregnancy from a fallopian tube, or anywhere else it might have implanted, to the uterus," he said.
"Reimplantation is not physiologically possible. Women with ectopic pregnancies are at risk for catastrophic hemorrhage and death in the setting of an ectopic pregnancy, and treating the ectopic pregnancy can certainly save a mom's life," said Zahn.
What's not mentioned is that even if implantation into the uterus were possible, there would have already been so much damage done by malnourishment outside the womb that it would most likely die and spontaneously abort anyway.
Now, why don't they do something useful and square the circle. That ought to keep them out of trouble for a while.
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